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In Reply to: RE: Naturally, I'd choose... posted by timm on November 08, 2021 at 17:24:01
I can't imagine the ginormous soundstage this little 3 ft man can produce in these speakers.
Nine foot tall speakers can make it look that way. ;)
I've been an electrostat fancier since I was a teen in the 70s and have heard a wide range of designs starting with Dayton-Wrights. My least favorite are the hybrids as they lack coherency to these ears.
What the Sound Labs achieve is the output and first octave capability of larger Acoustats mated with the midrange transparency of Quads. Add the presentation of a realistic sounding image as a dipolar line source along with wide dispersion via the angled facets of 90 degree cores. What I find amazing is how little the sound quality changes as you move around the room. Sitting. Standing. In front of them. Behind. Close. Far away.
On another board, I contributed a video of playing a dynamic piece while walking around the room with my iPhone. One thought I had recorded it with the microphone in a fixed position.
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Have you heard the ML Masterpiece series?
I have not.
But placing the crossover at 380 hz - where the fundamentals of voice and most instruments lie - is problematic for truly coherent response transitioning cone woofers to electrostatic panels.
Had that choice been two octaves lower, however, (like my HT) I would likely find the discontinuity less noticeable.
At that budget, I would seriously consider 3.7s with subs.
without evidence.
do, however, draw from fifty years of experiential evidence and understand how inconsistent directivity affects my perception of realism.
To each his own. :)
Linkwitz wrote a paper -- it's on his site somewhere -- in which he posited that the frequency response of reflected sound has to be similar to the frequency response of the direct sound for the ear to interpret it as reverberation. I don't remember whether he did experiments to test his hypothesis, though.
I'm really not conveying a deliberate choice or thinking process. It's just how I've always been impacted by the sound. And I appreciate the fact that many others are not in the same way. I discovered that while I learned a considerable amount about music and audio from valuable mentors, I have different priorities than any of them. And those really haven't changed much over time.
Years ago, I visited a fellow inmate in Ohio during a business trip. My only disappointment was that it was only for an evening. He was quite the fine tuner and had a pair of tweaked Advents (my first "real" speaker as a teenager and what's found in the garage) and some JBL L110s. He played the Advents first and naturally, they sounded very familiar. With his stands and custom cabinets, I noticed better first octave bass than I was accustomed to. When we switched over to the JBLs, I heard a more neutral presentation with better top end extension. But - a big but - their inconsistent directivity created a weird hourglass shaped soundstage I immediately found distracting. It was only after I observed this that he listened further and began to understand what I perceived. He later retired them.
I cannot "un-hear" what I find compromises coherency and thus realism to these ears.
I've noticed similar differences in soundstage. In fact, the first planars I'd heard, a pair of KLH-9's that a friend scored when we were in college, blew me away -- I'd never heard much of a soundstage at all! That, and the transparency, is what got me into planars. Even that was never quite right, though -- by today's standards, the driver arrangement on the KLH-9's is clumsy.
I'd never heard much of a soundstage at all!
That's a concept that has many facets. What I find important is for the harmonics of an instrument to sound like it's coming from the same place as the fundamentals. Which is where consistent directivity comes into play.
...the driver arrangement on the KLH-9's is clumsy.
In that regard, I confess a decided preference for truly full range designs. The 9 is an electrostat that runs full range, but is not a full range electrostat as it has multiple frequency specific drivers. Hearing the Dayton-Wrights in '76 introduced me to that distinction. It had eight panels, but they were identical and covered the same range. And mounted in a slight arc to improve dispersion.
I'm still waiting for someone to make a line source version of the ESL-63. It could have an essentially perfect line source dipole pattern, something that short of a speaker the size of the Sound Labs you can only approximate with facets or a curved driver since they remain directional only where the wavelength is short.
Click here for pics.
Interesting! It looks like it's still a point source, though -- a line source has some advantages such as immunity from the ill effects of floor and ceiling reflections (which in a line source just extend the line acoustically).
I can believe that. My 20.7 do similar. No particular area sounds all that different. I was especially sensitive this when I first got them walking around the room or out of the room
Tall line source + nearly perfect dispersion thanks to the narrow ribbon -- pretty much the only thing that will change in a major way are the crossover lobes!
Tall line source + nearly perfect dispersion thanks to the narrow ribbon...
I've heard both the 20.1 and 3.7 at Sea Cliff using similar electronics. While the 20.1 clearly had better first octave response, I found the 3.7 the more coherent.
You can pick apart the frequency ranges in the 20.1.
Yep, same thing with the 20.7 -- the speakers have become more coherent. I think the quasi ribbons make a difference -- they're cleaner and sound more like the ribbon. And I think the gentler crossovers make a difference as well, since the change is gradual.
The 30.7 is the most coherent of all -- they added a midbass coupler because they found that the bass panels muddied the sound of the midrange, and the new high quality midrange is amazing -- it measures like a tweeter and for all the size of the 30.7, for me, it's the midrange that stands out.
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